Roosevelt Franklin

The cover of Roosevelt Franklin's 1971 LPThe Year of Roosevelt Franklin

Roosevelt Franklin was a Muppet featured on the children's television series Sesame Street during the early 1970s. He is purple with shaggy black hair that stands on end. His name is a word play on the name of the late US President Franklin Roosevelt, but the first and last names are reversed. Sesame Street cast member Matt Robinson, who also played Gordon on the series for the first three seasons (1969-72), provided Roosevelt Franklin's voice.

Franklin was an intelligent boy who often spoke in rhyme or scat. Franklin began to appear less frequently in episodes created after the mid-1970s until he no longer was on the series.

Roosevelt Franklin usually appears in scenes with his mother, voiced by Loretta Long, who plays Susan on the series, and Roosevelt frequently recited poetry. Later scenes were set in a classroom at Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School, in which Roosevelt appeared to fill in for an absent teacher while teaching lessons about up and down,[1] high and low,[2] loud and soft,[3] here and there,[4] good and bad luck,[5] poison,[6] Africa,[7] rhyming words,[8] trying and trying again,[9] leaving other people's belongings alone,[10] and street-crossing safety.[11]

Franklin is featured on a 1971 record album called The Year Of Roosevelt Franklin, Gordon's Friend from Sesame Street, which was reissued in 1974 as My Name Is Roosevelt Franklin.[12]